January 21, 2020
Interservice rivalries: A force for good
It’s no secret that the military services fight hard to protect their shares of the defense budget. Just last week, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday made his case for a greater share of the defense budget. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy quickly answered, making the same claim on behalf of his service. What if the Department of Defense were able to use these rivalries as a force for good? The secretary of defense should pit the services against each other in a healthy competition for solutions to real operational challenges. The reward? More funding in their budgets to implement the best solutions.
It is by now old news that the 2018 National Defense Strategy solidified a shift in priorities from long-term counterinsurgency and stabilization operations in the Middle East to strategic competition with China and Russia. This shift represents a significant change in what the country will require of the joint force in the future. As a result, to fully embrace this shift in priorities, it follows that the services must accept additional risk in some areas in order to invest in the capabilities required to sustain U.S. military advantage over aspiring great powers. In other words, in order to implement the NDS, the DoD must shift resources.
But shifting resource around with the defense budget is really hard. For the most part, defense budgets are built from the bottom up, with each program having strong institutional champions, regardless of how relevant that program is to the current strategy. In this environment, it’s difficult to take money away from something to give it to something else. The result is budgets that largely reflect the status quo.
Read the full article in Defense News.
More from CNAS
-
Will Europe Send Combat Forces to Ukraine?
Commentary
Any idea that Europe could deter Russia from breaking a cease-fire and renewing its attack with the presence of a light peacekeeping force is fantasy....
By Franz-Stefan Gady
-
There Is Still Much To Know About Drone Sightings on the East Coast
Podcast
NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Stacie Pettyjohn of the Center for a New American Security, about why the federal government hasn't provided more details about drones spotted ove...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
Defense Expert Weighs In on Mysterious Drone Sightings
Video
Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the think tank Center for a New American Security, discusses the drone sightings, which some officials are calling "a slig...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
How Trump Will Change the World
Commentary
Trump has won the chance to determine U.S. national security policy and will wield the impressive power embodied in the men and women now waiting to work for him....
By Peter Feaver
